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Abstract

[Background] We recently reported that human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells can be induced to differentiate into cardiomyocytes, and characterized their phenotype. Future investigation of human genetic heart disease such hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and long QT syndrome, or acquired heart disease such as myocarditis and diabetic cardiomyopathy should be examined using human iPS cell-derived cardiomyocytes. To address this question, we tried to establish various iPS cells which were obtained from healthy volunteers and patients with genetic heart disease.

The HCM patient was a 61 year-old male, who has been refractory to medical therapy, showed severe dyspnea and underwent dual chamber pacing and percutaneous alchohol septal ablation. The iPS cells derived-cardiomyocytes from this patient are now being investigated, and the characteristics were compared with those from healthy volunteers.

From a 30 year-old male with familial ASD/VSD, we also established the patient derived-iPS cells.

[Conclusions] We established iPS cells from five healthy donors, HCM and ASD/VSD patients. Those iPS cells showed typical stem cell morphological appearance and common stem cell markers. Patient specific iPS cells might be a great tool to elucidate the mechanisms of several heart diseases and to lead to the development of new revolutionary therapies.